He’s a righty, no, he’s a lefty, actually — he’s both for the A’s
Ambidextrous Pat Venditte proving the doubters wrong
OAKLAND— Pat Venditte’s journey to instant celebrity took eight years of toiling in the minors, making stops at nine different hometowns — three of them abroad — and proving countless skeptics wrong.
Now that he has arrived in the majors and drawn national attention, the Oakland Athletics’ switch-pitcher sounds neither vindicated nor bitter. Rather, he’s grateful and determined.
If it wasn’t for the years perfecting his unique ability to get batters out with both hands, he might not be here.
“As you get higher in the minor leagues, the skeptics, there’s more of them, because the hitters get to be better at double-A and triple-A,” Venditte said Tuesday in a news conference before the A’s hosted the Texas Rangers. “They’re tough hitters to get out one-handed, let alone with two. So there’s a lot of people who think, ‘This probably isn’t going to work here.’ It was my job to show them otherwise.”
That he did, time and again. Venditte (pronounced ven-DEH-tee) had a 2.37 ERA and struck out 10 batters per nine innings over his eight seasons beating the bushes, the first seven of them in the New York Yankees organization until the A’s signed him as a free agent last November.
“They (the Yankees) gave me the opportunity to pitch and show what I could do to other organizations, and for that I’m grateful,” Venditte said. “I’m glad Oakland has taken a chance on me and allowed me to show what I can do.”
While the stats said Venditte and his two-armed approach belonged in the big leagues, his middling fastball and baseball convention offered a different opinion. Who ever heard of an ambidextrous pitcher at this level?
Journeyman right-hander Greg Harris had pitched left-handed for one game in his final season in the majors, 1995, but mostly for the novelty of it. No pitcher had done it fulltime in the modern era, which began in 1900, until Venditte debuted with two scoreless innings against the Boston Red Sox on Friday. He had earned the call-up, less than a month shy of his 30th birthday, by putting up a1.36 ERA with 33 strikeouts in 33 innings at triple-A Nashville.
“Some people thought he was kind of gimmicky coming out of college, but it’s worked,” said Dan Feinstein, Oakland’s director of pro scouting. “He’s been able to get hitters out on both sides at every level. What starts out as a gimmick, if you do it in double-A and triple-A, people start taking you seriously.”
Though it’s early, now he’s doing it at the big league level, too. Tuesday night, Venditte made his home debut, working the ninth inning of an eventual 2-1 loss to the Texas Rangers. He retired the side in order, and through three appearances, Venditte has retired all 10 batters he’s faced.
Venditte seems like the perfect fit for Oakland, which pioneered the use of advanced metrics, is constantly looking to exploit matchups and loves platooning. In Venditte, the A’s have discovered the ultimate matchup advantage, a reliever who can attack most batters from the side they find hardest to hit.
And indeed, the A’s had been tracking Venditte for years and contacted him right after he became a free agent. But Feinstein points out it had less to do with Moneyball or the chance to save a roster spot and more with his knack for retiring hitters from both sides of the plate.
In his minor-league career, Venditte limited lefties to a .182 batting average and righties to a .236 mark.
“We didn’t sign him because he throws with both arms,” Feinstein said. “We signed him because he was able to get outs at every level. Whenever we see somebody like that, we don’t care if he throws with his feet. If he gets outs, we’re going to have interest.”
Venditte, a natural right-hander, started throwing with his weak hand as a young kid at the urging of his father, who goes by the same name. Growing up in Omaha, Neb., the developing pitcher was able to start a game left-handed on Friday night, then right-handed two days later, accumulating twice as many innings as most pitchers while staying within the rules and avoiding injury.
Scholarship offers didn’t come his way, so Venditte took that ability to college at Creighton, where he walked on and made the squad as a freshman. It wasn’t until his junior year, when the Yankees drafted him in the 45th round, that he thought pro ball was a real option. He went back to school for his senior season, but the Yankees persisted and drafted him again the next year, this time in the 20th round.
Pat Sr. and his wife, Janet, made it to Boston for their son’s debut, but to this day the younger Venditte has not asked his dad why he spent the time teaching him to throw lefty.
“I think he just wanted to see, ‘If there can be switch-hitters, why can’t there be a switch-pitcher to have that advantage?’ ” said Venditte, who uses a six-finger glove originally designed for Harris. “I think it was just a way for us to spend time together as I was growing up.”
Venditte’s fastball tops out at about 87 to 88 m.p.h., but he mixes in an effective changeup and curveball, both coming from a sidearm delivery and usually with the benefit of the matchup advantage.
That changes when facing switchhitters due to what has become known as the Pat Venditte Rule, the product of a prolonged standoff with switch-hitter Ralph Henriquez while playing A-ball in 2008. Now, when a switch-hitter comes to the plate, Venditte has to signal to the umpire which arm he’ll throw with, and he can’t change during the at-bat.
The decision of which way to attack is almost always made by the manager, which led to a bit of confusion Friday when facing Red Sox catcher Blake Swihart, a switch-hitter. Venditte forgot that manager Bob Melvin wanted him to go after Swihart right-handed.
“I had faced him a few times in the minor leagues,” said Swihart. “He actually always chose to throw lefty against me. That’s the first time I ever faced him righty.”
Given his experience against Venditte, Swihart was less thrown off than the fans were at Fenway Park on Friday. To most, Venditte was just another anonymous rookie. Then they noticed something different.
“I could see some people sitting behind the bullpen going like, ‘Wait a minute. I thought a lefty was on the mound. No, it’s a righty,’ ” A’s lefty Drew Pomeranz said. “It’s pretty funny seeing the look on people’s faces, kind of like. ‘What the hell’s that?’ ”
It’s an ambidextrous pitcher — not an amphibious one as one headline said — and he intends to stay for a while.